Chapter 33 - Interlude at dungkar gompa

Since the time of the passing away of Tomo Géshé Rimpoché, I had nor felt a similar upsurge of religious emotion and the feeling of deep relationship which characterises the bonds between Guru and Chela; in fact, Ajo Rimpoché was not replacing my first Guru, but became another link connecting him with me, by strengthening and completing what I had received during my apprenticeship at Yi-Gah Chö-Ling. And here, I must also remember with gratitude the impetus which we received from my Gurubhai,^[1] the abbot of Dungkar Gompa, who administered Tomo Géshé's chief monastery during his absence and the minority of his reincarnation, who at that time was studying at Sera near Lhasa. His hospitality and kindness during our stay at Dungkar Gompa were both touching and reassuring, because it demonstrated the tolerance and the mutual respect that exists between the different branches of Buddhist tradition in Tibet where all initiates are honoured, irrespective of the sect or school to which they belong.

We were given a beautiful little Lhakhang, a kind of private chapel, as used by incarnate Lamas or high dignitaries -- as our dwelling-place. But since, according to the rules of the Gelugpa Order (which maintains strict celibacy), no woman can stay overnight within the walls of the monastery, Li Gotami was offered for the nights a little room in an out-house just at the entrance of the monastery. The Nyerpa (steward) very innocently said to us: 'Anila,^[2] need not be afraid to be alone; she will sleep with the Lama to whom the room belongs.' Before any misunderstanding could occur I assured the Nyerpa that I would stay there myself with Anila during the night, as it would be too difficult to separate our luggage, and that only during the daytime would we stay in the Lhakhang. The Nyerpa, naturally, had meant no offence, because in Tibet, where dwelling space is limited and the climate cold, it is customary for pilgrims or travellers of both sexes to spend the night together in any available room without the slightest embarrassment.

A short time later, we had an opportunity to observe this for ourselves. The room in which we used to sleep had a kind of flimsy wooden partition open at one end and more a symbolical than factual barrier between the two parts of the room, which remained, anyway, open to view. The Lama whose guests we were during the nights, slept on one side of the partition, while we occupied the other. He was a very kind and considerate person, who respected our privacy and made us feel quite at home in our little nook.

During the days of the Losar (the Tibetan new year festival), however, crowds of people from the tomoand Amo-chu Valleys congregated at the monastery, and all those whose homes were too far away to return there for the night remained in the Gompa, while their women-folk spent the nights in the available outhouses. In this way we and our good host found our quarters invaded by a lot of women, who without further ado spread themselves on every available bit of flow-space on both sides of the partition.

During our later travels we had more opportunities to observe the naturalness and the unrestricted hospitality of Tibetans, to whom prudery is unknown, so that women without the slightest embarrassment would undress down to the waist in order to wash their hair and the upper part of their body on warm summer days, and some of them would even work in the fields during harvest-time, stripped to the waist, when the sun got uncomfortably hot in the valleys.

It goes without saying that this applies mainly to the common people and not to the more sophisticated Lhasa society, with whom we came in contact during our prolonged stay at Gyantse, where for some time we inhabited the beautifully decorated Yabshi-Pünkhang, a palatial building of one of the aristocratic families of Lhasa, connected by marriage with the royal house of Sikkim. On the whole, one can say that the position of women in Tibet was very high. They played a leading role in all walks of life, except political, governmental, or ecclesiastical affairs, which in the Tibetan theocracy were closely interwoven.

Women were managing business and family property, they generally were the inheritors of family holdings, which were not to be divided, but had to be passed on intact from generation to generation, thus preventing the fragmentation and depreciation of the already scarce arable land, mostly depending on artificial irrigation. It was mainly due to these economic reasons that Tibetans had to find ways and means to keep the population strictly in proportion to the existing sources of livelihood. This was achieved partly by the system of polyandry -- which prevailed mainly in the desert-like regions of Western and Northern Tibet -- partly by the custom that at least one son of a family, and very often a daughter too, would join a monastery as a monk or a nun respectively.

Both monks and nuns were highly respected, especially those who had acquired some degree of learning or proficiency in meditation and in the performance of religious rituals. Among Tibetans, knowledge was almost as highly prized as sanctity, and very often both were combined to a remarkable degree. Among the Gelugpas (the only exclusively celibate sect of Tibetan Buddhism) intellectual knowledge, based on the study of traditional religious literature, including history, logic, philosophy, poetry, and in certain cases also medicine and astrology, was given particular prominence, while among the Kargyütpus, proficiency in meditation and spiritual experience was regarded as more important than book-knowledge and the art of debating. While the Gelugpas had to qualify themselves through a long course of studies in one of the monastic universities (like Drepung, Ganden, or Sera), the highest qualification of a Kargyütpa consisted in his ability to spend long periods in complete seclusion in caves, hermitages, meditation chambers, etc., during which he could put into practice what he had learned from his Guru and through the study of a limited number of religious texts which served as a guide for his particular Sādhanā.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Guru-bhai means a religious brother having the same Guru.

[2]:

Polite address of a nun or a Lama's wife.